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Monday, May 26, 2008

The other day I saw The Oxford Murders (excellent movie, by the way), which is based on a book of the same name (in English) by Guillermo Martínez. The original book was in Spanish, titled "Crímenes Imperceptibles", which literally means "Imperceptible Crimes". Now, how do you think they translated title of the movie back to Spanish? Do you think they used the original title, which would guarantee the translation conveyed what the author meant in the first place? If you answered yes to the last question, then A) you are wrong and B) I suck at implying my opinion through rhetorical questions. They translated it back as "Los Crímenes de Oxford", which literally means "The Oxford Crimes". Why? Why wasn't the original title good enough?

At the root of the problem is the fact that the first translation of the title wasn't literal. I can understand non-literal translations when the title relies on wordplay, or a common phrase on the original language that has no equivalent. In those cases, they are necessary. But in this case, there was no reason to replace "Imperceptible" with "Oxford" (ignoring changing crimes for murders, which is pretty much irrelevant and was probably a cultural thing). The author decided to emphasise the fact that the murders were imperceptible, rather than that they took place in Oxford. Why? I don't know. He had his reasons, or maybe not. Maybe he did it at random. But it doesn't matter, because the point is he did. The job of a translator is to try and convey the author's original ideas as clearly as possible, and I don't see how changing the title helps.

As a consequence of this, whoever translated the movie, which was originally in English, to Spanish, has a problem.* Is it best to translate the title of the movie literally, or is it better to follow the original title? That depends on your view of the relationship between the movie and the book. If you consider the movie to be an adaptation of the book to another medium, then it is clearly best to make the translation as close to possible to the true original, which is in this case the book. If, however, you consider that the movie is a separate and independent work that is simply based on the book and it deviates enough to merit a title change, then translate the title accordingly.

I haven't read the book yet, so I can't make a definite judgment in this respect and I'm left with few sources for speculation. What can I consider? Well, for example, that the director is Alex de la Iglesia, who is Spanish and presumably read the book in its original language. Did he give the movie that title because he thought it better described the changes he made, or just so that it would be easier to identify movie with book? I don't know, but the latter is considerably more likely.

Until I hear something definite from either Guillermo Martínez or Alex de la Iglesia regarding the titles they chose (and that's not likely to happen) or I read the book, I'm left to conclude that it would have been better to translate the title according to the original title of the book. Feel free to call me an idiot and explain why translators choose to change titles for no apparent reason. I always wanted to know that.

*Note: I'm not saying that the translator actually thought about this, but I would if I where in his place. Maybe that's why I limit myself to translating my own blog posts, in which I know with 100% certainty what the author meant in every case.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Can God create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift? If He can't, then He isn't omnipotent, because his powers of creation are limited. But if He can, then He isn't omnipotent either, because his power to move any object is limited. Therefore, omnipotence cannot exist

This is of course a paraphrasing, I don't know who came up with it originally and I didn't check any sources, but I assume you get the idea.

Now, someone such as myself who believes in a non-omnipotent God would be glad to use this argument as support, right? Well, not really. You see, there are many ways to solve the paradox of omnipotence, in a more or less satisfactory way. These are the ones I know. There are probably others, much better than these, but I don't know them. The first two are what I call the "He's omnipotent anyway" approaches. They are the least satisfactory.

1) The "Shut up" Approach.This has many variations, such as "Who are we, limited humans, to question God?" or "You just need to have faith". It basically consists of ignoring the issue and asking the questioner not to think about it. It's not really a solution for the paradox, but it is absurdly common, so I consider it deserves being mentioned.

2) The Illogical ApproachThis one consists of saying "Yes, God can create it, but He can also lift it." How, you may be wondering? "Because the laws of logic don't apply to God." The problem with this approach is that it touches on a really big issue: Is logic universal, and what proves logic is necessarily true? I won't go there right now. This approach is highly debatable, and accepting it creates a whole bunch of problems that we are better off without. It's not really the way to go, in my opinion.

The following 2 approaches are based on what I like to call "functional omnipotence". That is to say, an extent and amount of power that is not true omnipotence but behaves in the same way in most relevant cases.

3) God The WriterSimply, imagine God as the author of a book. He determines everything that happens in the story, and he can do whatever he wants with it, right?. Isn't He, at least from the point of view of the characters in the story, omnipotent? And yet, He really isn't. In His own universe, His powers are limited. This solves the paradox by putting God and his omnipotence in different realms. He can create rocks as big as He likes, but asking Him to lift them is nonsensical because the rock doesn't really exist for Him. Essentially, God is omnipotent in our world, but not in His.

4) Absolute vs. RelativeThe basis of this is to say that God can do anything, as long as He can describe it in absolute terms. For example, he can create a rock as big as he likes, as long as he specifies how large it is. He can create a rock that weighs 20g or 400kg or 10^10000000 tons, if he wants to, but he cannot create a rock that's only described as "heavier than I can lift". Simlarly, he can create a lifting force as big as he likes, that can be similar to the attraction of a small magnet or the gravity of a black hole, but he can't define it as "greater than the weight of the heaviest rock I can create"

I'm sure there are flaws with these approaches, but I'm also sure there are better ones around, that rely on similar principles or something completely different. I'll keep looking.

Edit: I'd include the most obvious one, "God can do anything, as long as that doesn't contradict the laws of logic", if not for the fact I can't shake the feeling there's something fallacious about it. I'd put this one along with the last two, as it is in fact limited omnipotence.

Greetings, seekers of truth. Welcome to Untheism, the one and only source for information regarding Lord Ungod.

I understand Untheism is not something most people are familiar with, and to remedy this I feel it is my duty to start the distribution of information concerning this religion. A small introduction is perhaps in order.

Untheism is the belief in the supremacy and powers of Ungod, Lord of Non-existence and Crafter of Paradoxes. Ungod is the God and Master of all things that don't exist. What does this mean? Simple. What we perceive as the "real world", the plane of existence, is not the only plane there is. In fact, there is an infinite amount of planes of non-existence, and every one of these is ruled by Ungod.

The plain of existence is formed by that which is rejected from non-existence. To put it in another way, in the beginning nothing existed, and everything was on the planes of non-existence. Then, Ungod removed some things from these planes, and placed them in a single plane, the plane of existence.

I mentioned before that Ungod is Lord of all things non-existent. By this I mean he has complete power over anything that belongs to the planes of non-existence, which contain everything that isn't contained in our own plane. And by that I mean everything. If you can even think about it, it's at least in one of the planes. Maybe more. Unicorns, Hisdifticatationism, phlogiston, an object accelerating past the speed of light, a word written in the Roman alphabet that is exactly 5.7 letters long, the last digit of pi, etc. None of these things exist, which means they are in the planes of non-existence.

Now, you may be wondering, if Ungod has power over everything that doesn't exist, does that mean he is powerless in our own plane? The answer is yes and no. He can't affect what happens here directly, but he can decide what begins to exist. To understand it better, you can picture our plane of existence, the infinite planes of non-existence surrounding it, and Ungod outside all of the planes, moving things into existence.

Once he puts something in our plane, he can't take it back. Until that something ceases to exist, Ungod has released all power over it, although if it suits his purposes, he may cause to exist other beings or concepts that cease the existence of that one. For example, if he wishes to claim a certain object, he can send a mythical monster to break that object, making it non-existent and placing it back in one of the realms under his control. If he feels that a certain natural law should no longer exist, he will send a replacement (You don't want to know what Quantum Mechanics' predecessor did, but it wasn't nice). And similarly.

Finally, I described Ungod as Crafter of Paradoxes. By this I mean that Ungod and non-existence are a problem to usual logic. For example, is there anything that is both more powerful than Ungod, and doesn't want to exist? If there is, then Ungod couldn't have placed it in the plane of existence, because this theoretical entity would overpower him. But if it doesn't, there would be something non-existent Ungod has no power over. This problem is clear evidence of the shortcomings of our existential logic. As Ungod is one of the few entities free from the grasp of classical logic, he enjoys creating problems logic can't solve, hence the title Crafter of Paradoxes.Those are the basic things you need to know about Untheism. Now, frequent questions asked to untheists:

Q: Is there an afterlife in Untheism?A: Sort of. According to untheists, there's no such thing as a soul that can remain after you die in the plane of existence. When you die, you cease to exist. This, as you can realize, means that you now inhabit one of the planes of non-existence Ungod rules over.

Q: Are there sins in Untheism?A: No. Ungod doesn't care about the inconsequential acts of humans. There is, however, a merit system for determining what happens to you when you cease to exist. Basically, Ungod likes interesting people. Be an individual, think for yourself and don't let others determine what is right and wrong for you. This will make you more interesting to talk to, which is one of Ungod favourite hobbies, and he will favour you in non-existence.

Q: How should I worship Ungod?A: As I mentioned before, Ungod's hobbies include talking to interesting people and creating paradoxes. Exercise logic and thinking for yourself, and that's the closest you can get.

Q: How should I pray to Ungod?A: You shouldn't. He refuses to influence our realm unless it's absolutely necessary, and it usually isn't.

Q: How do you know all this?A: I ceased to exist temporarily once. That doesn't mean I died, mind you, just that my mind went blank and I was no longer conscious of my existence, so nothing of what made me me was real anymore. While I was in this state, Ungod told me a bunch of really interesting stuff.

Q: Why didn't he tell anyone any of this before?A: He did, but there weren't many people that paid attention. Every once in a while, he'd check on someone who had to stopped existing for a while and tell them about him, but most of the time people thought they were hallucinating, or would believe him but nobody they told would believe them.

Q: How can I cease to exist?A: You can die, but that's probably not a good idea. You see, it's best for you to stay in existence, under the power of regular logic and natural laws, for as long as possible, which trains your mind for when you are out of their grasp. You have an eternity to live in non-existence, take advantage of the limited time you'll exist. If you want to cease to exist in a temporary way, I'm afraid nobody knows exactly how to influence that state. It's a matter of luck.

Q: Is Ungod omniscient?A: No. He can know what is happening now in the planes of non-existence and he has an excellent memory, but he can't know the future, and his knowledge of our realm is limited. He usually chooses not to read the minds of sentient beings that don't exist, because it's better if they tell him about their ideas themselves, once they are fully formed.

Q: What does Ungod look like?A: Depends on his mood. He changes his appearance all the time, you see. You may have noticed I usually talk about him as if he was male, but that's a matter of simplicity. I could just as well refer to her as Lady Ungodess.

Q: What about other Gods?A: They don't exist. If one of their believers ceases to exist, s/he may meet them in the planes of non-existence. Or Ungod or one of his emissaries may meet them and explain the whole business to them. It all really depends on how interesting you are to talk to.